


Advance and Retreat

by masterofmidgets



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Bullying, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sexual Harassment, Swords & Fencing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-30
Updated: 2011-09-30
Packaged: 2017-10-24 04:52:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masterofmidgets/pseuds/masterofmidgets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A man who knows what to do with a sword is a man anyone would think twice about messing with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advance and Retreat

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Шаг вперед, шаг назад](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2678660) by [kaiSSa666](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaiSSa666/pseuds/kaiSSa666)



The  night shift doesn’t relieve the bridge crew until 0300, long after the lights on the Enterprise have been dimmed to a facsimile of night, and by then Sulu would be perfectly happy to never see another control panel again. All he can think of as he navigates the ship’s maze-like corridors is how good it will feel to fall face-first into bed and die for a few hours, at least until the alarms start blaring for another one of the emergencies that seem to follow their captain so closely.

As he comes around the corner, he doesn’t quite see the three men jump away from Chekov, but the way they are standing close around him, crowding him against the wall, and the guilty expressions on their faces, tell him that he’s caught them at something.

“Friends of yours, Ensign?” he asks mildly. They are all dressed in Engineering red, and the shortest of them has several inches and at least 30 pounds on Chekov, who has half the senior staff and all of the ship’s cooks shoving food into his hands at every opportunity.

“We were just discussing some engineering principles,” the tallest man drawls with an unpleasant grin. “Isn’t that right, _Ensign_?”

Chekov squeaks and nods, and Sulu doesn’t believe them for a second. But he hasn’t actually seen anything, and acting suspicious and looking like a jerk are not subject to discipline under Starfleet regulations, so there’s nothing officially he can do. He does outrank them, at least, so he can send them on their way, which he does with a curt word and a sharp nod that leaves no doubt he knows what they were up to.

“If they were harassing you…” he starts. Chekov shakes his head hard; the tips of his ears are bright red, and his curls look like someone had yanked them, and Sulu has to push back the sudden urge to reach out and smooth them down again.

“Is nothing,” Chekov says, in a voice that sounds almost normal. “I can handle. But thank you.” The sudden smile he flashes him is so bright he feels parts of himself lighting up in response.

“Where were you going?” Sulu asks.

 “The transporter room. Mr. Scott is on duty and he has manual he promised lend me, article on warp theory. Very kind, yes?”

Sulu thinks for a moment, longingly, of his bed, but it passes. “Come on, then,” he finds himself saying. “I was going that way, we can walk together. You can tell me about these articles Scotty’s going to lend you.”

He doesn’t understand half of what Chekov babbles as they walk, most of the math far over his head, but he can’t help the smile that spreads across his face as he listens to the kid bubble over with enthusiasm, eyes wide and excited, hands weaving complex shapes in the air. He’s never seen someone so unapologetically in love with what they do, even in Starfleet; it’s that, and not, he tells himself, the sight of long-fingered hands and tight, graceful steps that makes his stomach flutter.

 

After that, Sulu appoints himself Chekov’s undeclared bodyguard.

He doesn’t tell Chekov, who he is certain would brush him off with a claim of stubborn self-sufficiency, a lack of a need for a baby-sitter, and a few muttered Russian curses for good measure. And he doesn’t tell the bridge crew, although from the looks the Captain and Commander Spock give him, they suspect something. But then, he and Chekov are the youngest officers on the bridge by several years, so maybe they just think he’s taking him under his wing in youthful solidarity against their deranged superiors.

Regardless, the fact remains that for several weeks Sulu is glued to Chekov’s side as tight as the seal on an airlock. Their rooms are close enough that it’s not hard to arrange to be walking to and from the bridge at the same time, and they already eat most of their meals at the same time; after the first day, when he spots Chekov eating by himself in the corner with his nose buried in a book and shoves himself into the bench across from him, planting his tray noisily on the table, they eat together, talking rapid-fire about navigating principles and the Captain’s latest failure to seduce any of his senior staff.

It’s only a few days before it stops feeling like a duty, like watching after a younger brother, and starts being something he looks forward to, the highlight of his day, even, which just makes Sulu realize how few people he actually knows on the Enterprise.

It’s not like it was back in the Academy, where he had the same students in his classes for three years and knew the names of almost all the people in his hall, where they were all on the same footing, half arrogant of their success and half terrified of failure. Kirk’s more approachable than Pike ever could have been, but the captain’s stripes on his sleeves still set him apart from the rest of them, off in his own little world where people die on his orders. Spock’s got this bubble of self-contained calm around him that Sulu doesn’t dare disturb, and Uhura, while nice, is just plain intimidating. And it’s hard to get to know other crew members, the ones who don’t serve on the bridge, the ones who don’t know what it’s like to be the only thing standing between the Enterprise and death. Or maybe he just hasn’t tried. 

Chekov is the closest thing he has to a friend right now. And when he sees him grinning broadly as he waves him over to the table at lunch, where there’s an extra tray loaded with his favorite cake that’s always gone before he gets off-duty, he can’t help but be pleased about it.

 

But in the end, it’s impossible to follow Chekov every second of the day without neglecting his duty or making himself look like an overly-polite stalker. About a month after Sulu takes it upon himself to watch out for him, the Captain assigns him to a shift in the Science bay unpacking and cataloguing supply cases, an easy if mindless job if a hundred of the cases hadn’t been mislabeled. It takes him two hours past the supposed end of his shift to sort the mess out, and by then he’s grubby, sore, and exhausted, wishing miserably for proper hot baths on the Enterprise instead of the space and water conserving showers built into their quarters.

The small alcove off the engineering sector, built for equipment storage, is poorly lit and nearly impossible to see into from any angle but directly in front of it, which is why Sulu doesn’t see them until he is almost on top of them. He hears them, though, from a few steps away, and the harshly snarled words and barking laughter make him pause.

“Ooh, look at the baby, is he scared of us?” one voice says, high and mocking.

The second voice is lower, and familiar; in his mind Sulu can see a red-shirted engineer smirking at him in a hallway. “What’s a baby like him doing on the Enterprise, anyway? What makes you so special, you little bug?”

An ugly snigger, and a third voice hisses, “Like he could do it on his own. Only thing special about a worm like him is how willing he is get on his knees.”

“That right?” Red Shirt drawls, low and slow and mean. “That how you got on this ship, worm? That how you got on the bridge, a snot-nosed kid who can’t even read the codes? You get down on your knees for the captain, wrap those pretty lips around his – _”_

The sound of flesh meeting flesh is a jolt to Sulu, and he steps briskly around the corner, doing his best to project Armed and Dangerous Superior Officer. The three men freeze when he comes into view, the tallest with his boot still digging into Chekov’s ribs, and when he presses his communicator to summon security, they bolt, scattering as they run.

He turns his attention instead to Chekov, curled in a defensive ball on the floor with his hands over his face.

“Hey now, it’s all right, they’re gone now,” he murmurs, wrapping his hands around Chekov’s wrists and tugging at them gently. He sucks in his breath sharply at the sight of his face; there’s blood dripping freely from his nose and smeared across his mouth, and one eye is already starting to blacken.

Chekov shoves him away and sits up, wincing and bracing a hand against his side, where they kicked him, when he moves too quickly. “Did not want you to see that,” he says, scrubbing a hand across his eyes. Sulu looks away and pretends he doesn’t see the tears streaked on his flushed cheeks.

“I should call security,” he says finally. “You can bring disciplinary action against them – I’d bet the Captain won’t take too kindly to people attacking his bridge team. Let me –”

“You can’t!” Chekov exclaims, eyes wide. “No security. Those men, they think I tell, they do worse. And the Captain…”

It’s not hard for Sulu to fill in the blanks, not when he’s seen the way Chekov looks at Kirk when he thinks no one is noticing him, a mix of the kind of youthful crush the captain can inspire just by smirking and flat-out hero-worship. It’s certainly not the way you look at a man you ever want to see you battered and bloodied from a bunch of thugs who thought you earned your job with sexual favors. And as much as he wants to watch the Captain kick their heads in while Commander Spock is bitingly sarcastic at them, as much as he wants them to suffer for the way Chekov is cringing away from his hands, Sulu doesn’t want him to die of mortification, which he suspects will happen if he calls in anyone else.

He slips a hand under Chekov’s elbow, guiding him to his feet, where he wavers for a moment before he finds his balance.  “No security,” Sulu agrees. “But we’re going to the med bay now, and you’re not allowed to argue.”

In the med bay, Dr. McCoy takes one glance at them and orders Chekov onto a bed and out of his shirt. He sinks onto the hard mattress eagerly enough to make Sulu worry, and when he strips out of his shirt he moves slowly as an old man, revealing ugly purple bruises that stand out starkly against his pale skin. He mumbles something about tripping and falling on the stairs, studying his shirt intently where it lies twisted in his lap.

“The stairs, eh?” McCoy snorts, glaring at them both. Sulu can’t meet his eyes either, but stares resolutely at the ground in front of him. “And these stairs were wearing boots, were they? No, don’t answer, I don’t want to hear it, ensign.”

He jams a hypospray anesthetic into his neck, pronounces the ribs cracked but the nose unbroken, and treats him with the bone knitter and a damp towel, scowling and muttering the whole while under his breath about young idiots who wouldn’t even admit they’d been in a fight. And then a officer in science blues comes staggering in with burns on her hands and he rushes off again, ordering Chekov not to move for another half-hour and Sulu to make sure he did as he was told.

In the silence the doctor leaves in his wake, Sulu realizes that he is still holding Chekov’s hand, which he grabbed to help him onto the bed and let him cling to while McCoy prodded his ribs. His palm is warm and damp with sweat, and he can feel every knuckle under the thin skin, and he drops it like a hot phaser, feeling the heat of a blush rushing to his face.

“You should have told me,” he says, angrily, to hide his embarrassment. “They could’ve –”

Chekov’s voice is a little tearful still, and very small. “They surprised me.  They are – you would say jealous? Just like at academy. Mostly they are just saying things. Doesn’t matter. But… I was walking, they discover new path. I couldn’t run, and I am – small.” He chokes back a laugh, and Sulu reconsiders telling the Captain. He thinks signing them up for the next embassage to the Romulans sounds like an excellent idea. “Don’t tell anyone? An officer should…take care of himself. And it will make worse.”

When he was ten, Sulu was the shortest boy in his class, and the smartest, and the only one whose parents didn’t speak English when they didn’t have to, and as a consequence he spent a lot of his lunch periods hiding in the science labs, where Mr. Danvers let him read and take care of the plants. He still has the scar on his arm, where several of the worst boys caught him out after school and knocked him off his bike. He looks at the set, stubborn expression on Chekov’s pale face and remembers coming home cradling his bleeding arm and telling his parents he rode into a tree.

He pushes Chekov’s hair off his forehead in a gesture a little more than friendly than it could be, and says, “Tell you what. I’ll walk you back to your quarters, let you sleep off all the drugs the good doctor just gave you. And after our shift tomorrow, we’re starting fencing lessons.”

“Fencing?” Chekov asks, obviously confused.

He nods firmly. “A man who knows what to do with a sword is a man anyone would think twice about messing with. And I’ve got an extra sabre in my gear.”

Chekov is still eyeing him like an equation with a misplaced variable, but the drugs must be kicking in, because he doesn’t argue, just lets himself be helped up and steered out of  the med bay and down the halls to his room, where Sulu leaves him, sprawled out on the narrow bed and snoring louder than the Captain after a half dozen bottles of Andorian ale.

 

The next day they have a long, boring slog of a shift in which no enemy ships hail them, none of the planets they pass show dangerous gravitational anomalies, and everyone pointedly avoids commenting on Chekov’s black eye. But at the end, when the late shift is there to relieve them and everyone is stretching and bitching and wandering off for whatever off-duty fun they can find, Sulu comes up behind Chekov and walks him out with a hand on the small of his back before he has the chance to protest.

The practice room on the third level is small compared to the gym on the main deck, nothing more than a handful of weight machines, a punching bag, and a stretch of padded mats, but it is also unoccupied, and it’s considerably less likely they’ll be interrupted during their lesson. And it has all the equipment they need, Sulu made sure of that last night after he left Chekov in his room.

“The jacket fastens at your side, “ he says, tossing Chekov a bundle of equipment that he barely manages to catch, stumbling backward and trying to keep his feet. “The mask should fit you – you don’t get to touch a blade ‘til I say so, but you should still get used to wearing it.”

After a few false starts, Chekov gets the quilted jacket untangled and shrugs into it, fumbling a little at the ties. For a moment, he looks unfamiliar, his thin frame somehow strengthened by the heavy lines of the jacket, the mask covering his face, and Sulu thinks he looks beautiful, perfectly posed. But unfamiliar. He shivers, and then Chekov lunges dramatically and falls over. Sulu laughs, relieved.

“So, not like that?” Chekov pushes the mask off and grins up at him from the mat.

“Not like that,” he affirms, offering him a hand to haul him to his feet. “We’ll hold off on the theatrics just yet, ensign. You have to learn the basics first.”

He starts Chekov off on stretches, the same kind they all did in physical training back when they were at the Academy, and is pleased to see that he knows at least this much. He puts them both through their paces, enjoying the stretch and pull of muscles that don’t get used as much as he’d like, sitting at a computer console, and watching out of the corner of his eye as Chekov’s shirt rides up and exposes several inches of pale stomach.

When he is sure they’ve stretched enough that Chekov won’t hurt himself through anything other than his own lack of coordination, he sets him to the bane of every novice fencer’s existence: footwork drills. He demonstrates how to stand, knees bent, feet squared off, shoulders forward, and watches as Chekov struggles to arrange his gangly limbs into a sloppy approximation of his own textbook stance. When he finally meets Sulu’s satisfaction, he moves on to advances and retreats.

He stands with his arms crossed, trying to look stern, as Chekov steps forward and back. Somewhat to Sulu’s surprise, he is a quick study, and graceful when he doesn’t let his excitement overwhelm him. With some work, he might make a halfway decent fencer, although he’ll never win any medals.

He begins to show Chekov the lunge, however, and finds himself completely frustrated in moments.

"No, no, you have to - you have, the knee, it has to be - oh, let me show you!"

Chekov straightens. Apparently he expects Sulu to demonstrate.  Instead, he impulsively steps behind him, chest pressed against his narrow back, one hand wrapped around Chekov’s bicep and the other around his hip. He can feel the hard bones under the skin there, can feel the heat of the body against his, smell the sharp tang of sweat, and Chekov twists his neck to look back over his shoulder at him in confusion. When he moves his leg, just a fraction, Chekov’s moves with him.

"This knee. At a right angle, no more. No less. Don't hurt yourself." He pats Chekov's wrist. "This arm. Snap it back, when you step forward. Not, not the waving thing. Snap. Clean."

He tugs the arm back, his own arm flush against it, slowly.

"Like that?" Chekov asks. His voice is a bit odd; Sulu ignores it.

 "Like that. But quickly. And this arm - " he lifts his right hand from Chekov's hip, aligns his right arm with Chekov's. "In the basic stance, it is crooked, remember?"

Chekov nods.

"As you step forward, your arm stretches out. Smoothly. It should reach the end at the same time as your leg finishes its movement." He settles him into stance, pulls Chekov's body against him, lines up their legs, their arms.

"Now. Go."

They move, smoothly, beautiful. Chekov follows him perfectly. It's Sulu's lunge, it's Chekov's lunge, and all of a sudden he remembers that this is a real person he is standing flush against, and blushes, stepping away quickly as soon as they recover.

 "Now. Lunge." Chekov lunges. His form is perfect, and there's a light flush high on his cheekbones.

“Excellent!” he exclaims, justifiably pleased, and Chekov crows with delight, shattering again the image of a studied swordsman and replacing it with that of a boy at play.  Sulu starts laughing and finds he can’t stop. Every look at Chekov’s face, so brilliantly happy, just sets him off again, until they are both slumped on the floor of the gym, holding their stomachs and gasping for breath, shaking with laughter.

Chekov is pink all the way to his hairline and under the collar of his shirt, and he flashes him a bright smile and says, “thank you!” Sulu can’t help himself. He leans across the distance between them and kisses him. Just the lightest peck of lips on his cheek, gone before he even registers it, but a kiss nonetheless.

And then he scrambles to his feet and runs out of the room.

He is three floors away, slumped against a wall and gasping for breath, before he realizes he left all of his gear in the practice room. But it’s fine, he’ll pick it up later. It’s not like he has to worry about Chekov coming back for another lesson, now.

 

He doesn’t see Chekov again for almost a week. First he has his day off, and then Spock assigns him to an engineering rotation, and then he’s on the away team when they get ordered to a diplomatic mission that ends with two officers barely escaping being eaten and the Captain punching the city’s leader in the throat. But the first time he walks onto the bridge and Chekov squeaks and looks away so fast he falls out of his seat, Sulu nearly turns back around and walks out again. Losing his first real friend on the Enterprise because he can’t contain a stupid crush is much worse than giant man-eating worms. Or even Commander Spock looking at him disapprovingly and doing that thing with his eyebrow.

Their stations on the bridge are right next to each other, which usually means they do a fair amount of chatting and playing games on the ship’s computers on quiet days, but today Chekov doesn’t even look at him. A few times Sulu thinks he’s caught him sneaking a surreptitious glance, but every time, before he can say anything – like maybe ‘sorry’ – Chekov jerks away again, ears blushing hotly, like he’s ashamed of being caught.

The rest of the bridge crew is watching them, Sulu is sure. Chekov falling out of his chair was enough of a spectacle, and now he’s twitching like a fish every time Sulu moves, it’s not that subtle. He overhears three different people, including the Captain, ask him quietly if he needs to go to sickbay, and there are more than a few glares in his own direction. It isn’t a secret that he’s Chekov’s closest friend, and he’s ignoring him so blatantly that it’s obvious whatever’s wrong has something to do with him.

It’s trying, and by the end of his shift his shoulders are stiff and tight and there is a headache throbbing at the base of his skull. He wants more than anything to curl up in bed with a book and a bottle of Aldebaran whiskey and pretend everything isn’t ruined.

Just off the bridge he passes Chekov in the hallway, where he is being chatted up by a long-haired lieutenant from security. He hears the girl ask him, giggling and twining a lock of hair around one finger, if he’d like to go with her to the bar for a few drinks, and his hands at his sides clench into fists.

“Sorry, it is very kind offer,” Chekov says. “But I am having fencing lesson with Lieutenant Sulu now. And I think he will be very disappointed if I miss.”

Sulu doesn’t run to the practice room. But he does speed up his pace a bit. Just so he can look over their equipment before Chekov gets there, he tells himself, no other reason. As a result, when the door’s sensors chime and slide open to admit Chekov, he is standing in the middle of the room with an armful of fencing equipment, his attempt to appear collected and nonchalant somewhat hampered by the fact that he is still slightly out of breath.

Chekov bounces towards him, stopping a few feet away.

"What are doing today?"

"Drills, of course!" Sulu answers, and pretends that Chekov hasn't ignored him since their last lesson, pretends that Chekov isn't blushing. Just a little, distractingly. The tips of his ears are red. He wants to touch them, see if they are as warm as they look. "See if you've forgotten anything."

 "I would not!" Chekov cries, and starts to settle into stance, but Sulu grabs his elbow.

"You already have - no fencing until you've warmed up." He looks over Chekov, sees that he's a little out of breath. "And running here from the bridge doesn't count." He bites his tongue, and doesn't add an endearment.

Although it is a struggle, Sulu keeps his hands to himself this lesson, correcting Chekov’s mistakes with a sharp word and a curt gesture while he stands back and observes. And there are few enough mistakes to correct, especially as the lesson goes on and his body falls into the easy rhythm of the footwork drills. it’s clear he’s been practicing on his own, though Sulu didn’t ask him to.

“You’re making very good progress,” he says when the end of the hour comes, all too quickly. “If you can show me next week that you can still do a proper lunge, I’ll let you start with a practice sabre.”

Chekov pauses in the middle of taking off his fencing jacket, leaving one side hanging around his hips. “You want we should continue lesson?” he asks, running a hand through his hair to smooth it and only succeeding in making it look wilder. “I was not sure you would –“

"No - of course I want to! I -" Sulu pauses. "What I mean to say is, I enjoy this. If you do."

There are other things he should be saying, important things, but he doesn’t know what they are, because all of his mind – as well as other significant parts – are occupied with the armful of warm ensign he suddenly has, and the tongue that Chekov has down his throat. There is no mistaking Chekov’s intentions now, not when he has his arms flung around Sulu’s neck, tugging him closer, and his legs wrapped around Sulu’s hips, not when he is being kissed for all he is worth. And Chekov seems to think he’s worth a lot.

Some time later, when he pulls away to catch his breath – and if the Vulcan Science Academy had been so great, why had they never found a way to kiss that didn’t require air – he realizes they are sitting on the floor, and he doesn’t know when that happened. Or how Chekov’s fencing jacket has ended up in a tangled wad on the other side of the room, along with his own shirt.

Chekov sees the jacket, and begins to laugh, and soon they're almost unable to stay sitting up, they're laughing so hard. Eventually Sulu stops, and Chekov is limp against his chest, petting him absently and giggling every now and then.

Chekov mumbles something into his chest.

"Hmm?" At this, Chekov tilts his face up, grinning.

"I not look at you last week," he confesses. "Was worried would, ah, this. On the bridge."

“I thought you were upset with me,” Sulu says, running his thumb absent-mindedly over Chekov’s cheek.  “Or embarrassed. I thought you wouldn’t want to do this any more.”

“Never, never!” He ducks his head, blushing again. Sulu has never seen anyone blush as often as Chekov; it makes him want to think of more things to say so he can sit here forever, watching him turn pink and trying to hide how much he enjoys it. “Embarrassed, yes. You are not supposed to know how I think you are handsome, and how I am wanting to kiss you, all the time. But I always want to do this.”

It doesn’t matter that they sitting half-dressed on the floor of the practice room; it doesn’t matter that the door doesn’t lock and someone could walk in on them at any second; when he sees the look in Chekov’s eyes he has to tip his face up and kiss him until they are both breathless and panting again.

The next day, when the Captain asks how Chekov’s fencing lessons are going, they both collapse into hopeless laughter, while the rest of the bridge shakes their heads and wonders what the joke is.

  



End file.
